Steam for Linux

So I got Ubuntu and downloaded Steam and started the download of TF2. That was...6 hours ago and It's currently 40% done. Along with that, it'll let me click things, then it'll freeze up on me for about 15 seconds and the screen will dim. The brightness will then come back up and I can click things again for 2-3 seconds, then it'll freeze again. I'm hoping to get some help from some of you other more experienced Linux/Ubuntu users out there.

I don't know what all is useful in trying to figure out the problem but I found a few things.

My processor wakeups per second is hovering between 4000 and 5500.

I'm not sure what it means, but the "in" column returned from "vmstat 1" in the terminal reads out at just under 10,000 at it's highest number.

I am at a loss here. I REALLY want to like Ubuntu, it is beautiful and if working correctly I think it'd really be worth keeping. As it stands right now though, it's so incredibly slow that I just can't do it.

It's running on a machine with a quad core 3.6ghz amd processor, 8 gigs of ram and a nvidia 9800GT video card. It's a bit of an older machine, like 4 years ish I think, but it's still running everything I throw at it extremely smoothly on windows 7.

I'm using the 12.10 release. Connected straight to my modem. TF2 shows that it's downloading at about 6 megs a second, but if that were really true, it would have been done a long long time ago.

No worries, it's propably because tons of TF2 Windows users suddenly downloading TF2 for Linux to get freakin' Tux mascot :) Just a Steam servers overload.

EDIT: Sidenote - WUBI will not give you same performance as normal installation (Windows Installer is WUBI), so if you want from Ubuntu more then just a TF2 mascot, you should install it normally next to your Windows.

@DerRidda - Everything will download, but it is all equally slow and jumpy.

@gutigen - Would that also explain my system's freezing, lagging, jumping and such? I don't think that the steam servers being overloaded would cause my entire system to freeze like what is happening. From what I've read, my processor wakeups per second should be like 150ish, rather than 5500, it just hit 7,000 a little bit ago... Therefore, I'm thinking something else is afoot. Thanks for the links!

@DerRidda - Everything will download, but it is all equally slow and jumpy.

@gutigen - Would that also explain my system's freezing, lagging, jumping and such? I don't think that the steam servers being overloaded would cause my entire system to freeze like what is happening. From what I've read, my processor wakeups per second should be like 150ish, rather than 5500, it just hit 7,000 a little bit ago... Therefore, I'm thinking something else is afoot. Thanks for the links!

@ Wouter - How would I go about installing ntfs-3g? I don't have any idea where i'd start with that. I've wanted to play with Ubuntu for a while, heard good things, but this is my first foray into anything Linux/Ubuntu.

@gutigen - Thanks for the help! I've not installed GPU drivers. I'm going to tackle this in the morning since I'm about to crash. I'll post here with whatever happens as a result from that. Thanks again.

@ Wouter - How would I go about installing ntfs-3g? I don't have any idea where i'd start with that. I've wanted to play with Ubuntu for a while, heard good things, but this is my first foray into anything Linux/Ubuntu.

Either search for ntfs-3g in the software center or type this in the terminal: sudo apt-get install ntfs-3gfor the headers run this in the terminal: sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

I would also like to weigh in, i'm experiencing this exact same problem and it's driving me mad. I get the feeling it's a problem with video drivers but all the work arounds i see just run into dead ends. The simple problem is this. I can run steam perfectly fine without downloading anything. But as soon as i start the TF2 download, it runs fine for a couple of seconds then freezes not only steam but the whole system for roughly 10 seconds, Rinse repeat. I'm struggling to see how this is anything to do with video drivers, but rather networking issues. I'd love to get into Linux, i've heard a lot about it. But this...eeh..it's not fun.